I think once you are an experienced programmer, beyond being able to break down the target state into chunks of task, you are able to intuit pitfalls/blockers within those chunks better than less experienced programmers.
An experienced programmer is also more cognizant of the importance of architectural decisions, hitting the balance between keeping things simple vs abstractions and the balance between making things flexible vs YAGNI.
Once those important bits are taken care of, rest of it is more or less personal style.
Yeah, while I understand rewrite-based iterations, and have certainly done them before, they've gotten less and less common over time because I'm thinking about projects at higher levels than I used to. The final design is more and more often what I already have in my head before I start.
I never hold all the code designed in my head at once, but it's more like multiple linked thoughts. One idea for the overall structure composed of multiple smaller pieces, then the smaller pieces each have their own design that I can individually hold in my head. Often recursively down, depending on how big the given project is and how much it naturally breaks down. There's certainly unknowns or bugs as I go, but it's usually more like handling an edge case than anything wrong with the design that ends in a rewrite.
An experienced programmer is also more cognizant of the importance of architectural decisions, hitting the balance between keeping things simple vs abstractions and the balance between making things flexible vs YAGNI.
Once those important bits are taken care of, rest of it is more or less personal style.